Did I mention the table in Telluride with Frances Ford Coppola, Bruce Dern and Don DeLillo? Yes, I did. Actually I did mention it twice. Later, when the whole situation dissolved I went outside, where you had this incredible view on the Rockies. It was getting dark and I wanted a cigarette. The Europeans usually stand together outside and smoke (Douglas Coupland, Microserfes: “These poor Europeans.”) I had spoken to Stefano briefly at JFK before we entered the charter. Now I asked him for a fag. His brother, a chain smoker, knew that Bärbel a German volunteer to the festival for 33 years had a pack of American Spirits. The orange ones. Nice. It’s always good to be around Italians at parties. Stefano is a two-smokes-a-day-man like me. They told me about The Slow Food Story––his documentary. Stefano’s brother came by car from Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay area. He is in the Slow Food business, importing the good stuff from Italy. Stefano told me that he is usually a scriptwriter. Slow Food Story is his first documentary. Because the movement came from Bra, his hometown. All of Stefano’s scripts and projects sound great: Il ragazzo invisibile (scheduled for 2014), 1992 (TV series), In Treatment (TV series), Pronti a tutto, La doppia ora, Come si deve. If you google these, (not that I google anymore) you get images of all these good-looking actors and actresses but no storyline. If you google Stefano Sardo you get a lot about the Slow Food Story but also this design line from the German Möbelhaus “Porta” comes up: Couches and sofas by Stefano Sardo. Lots of Polstermöbel. Back to Slow Food: Stefano’s film was scheduled for the Saturday morning. The cinema was packed. Michael Moore came from somewhere to see it. The festival co-director Tom Luddy introduced it mentioning his long-time friendship to Alice Waters and that he gave more interviews over the years about food than about film. This is for me the most interesting angle about Slow Food: Tom Luddy and Alice Waters* came out of the 1960s Berkeley Free Speech movement. Luddy was a Maoist––Carlo Pertini, the motor behind the Italian Slow Food movement, was a political activist in the communist movement Partito di Unità Proletaria. Furthermore the Italians behind it were mostly very funny comedians. Stefano’s film is also really funny. Really Italian. We met Stefano the day after Telluride in Berlin, jetlagged, giving interviews for the film’s German distribution in October. We convinced him to write his 60picks for the next 60 days. Now!

*In 1980, Werner Herzog asked Waters to cook his shoe for the film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. She prepared the shoe in the Chez Panisse kitchen, braising it in duck fat, herbs, and spices.